“Hello, I’m Stan Laurel, and my life is over.” It was the summer of 1957, and Stan Laurel, the creative force behind the most famous and beloved comedy duo in film history, had just lost his screen partner and good friend, Oliver Hardy. Laurel, who was naturally effusive and upbeat, was now understandably morose when he greeted visitors to his apartment. The comic was always welcoming—his number was listed in the phone book—yet this was an especially difficult time. Laurel had hoped that he and “Babe” Hardy would have another shot at stardom via the fledgling medium of television. It was not to be, although the indomitable Laurel would continue to write material for Laurel and Hardy, as he had for 30 years.
The pairing of the English-born Arthur Stanley Jefferson (Stan Laurel) and Oliver Norvell Hardy, descended from old American stock, was almost an accident. They each transitioned from the stage to silent film comedies in the mid-1910s, with Laurel taking various roles in films that he sometimes wrote and occasionally directed. Hardy first appeared on screen in 1914, then enlivened dozens of comedy shorts, often as a stubble-cheeked villain. Laurel and Hardy worked together (but not as a team) in a number of films starting with Lucky Dog in 1921. Fortuitously, both actors wound up as contract players at Hal Roach Studios, where an enterprising director, Leo McCarey, recognized the chemistry between the two and suggested they be teamed for a series of shorts beginning in 1927.
The duo made their first sound two-reeler, Unaccustomed As We Are, in 1929, and unlike many silent film stars whose voices were unsuitable for talking pictures, Laurel and Hardy made the transition with ease. By 1930, the duo was internationally famous, and Hal Roach decided to try a labor-intensive experiment: Laurel and Hardy would shoot multiple versions of some of their shorts in French, Spanish, Italian and German. Working with coaches who were fluent in each of the languages, the boys would recite the dialogue, reading their lines phonetically from blackboards positioned out of camera range. While this made for some awkward moments, Roach was savvy enough to know that foreign audiences would find an occasional mispronunciation hilarious, and these alternate versions (which typically ran longer than the standard 18-minute American releases) were wildly popular.
Offscreen, the boys were a reversal of their screen characters, with Laurel taking the lead in most affairs, business and creative. He was totally absorbed and invested in the entity known as Laurel and Hardy, and while others were credited, he was the de facto director of the shorts and features made at Roach. Laurel was driven, yet he was unfailingly humble and approachable. Hardy was content to let Laurel run the show, and while he, too, was committed to the effort, he couldn’t wait to get off the set and onto the golf course. Their live appearances were a revelation for their fans, who never realized that Hardy was as physically imposing as he was: at 6’ 1” and more than 300 pounds, he towered over the average man. These live appearances (including a 1940 gig at Milwaukee’s Riverside Theater—Hardy had a memorable meal at Mader’s) would ultimately be the duo’s only means of staying connected with an adoring public.
Splitting with Hal Roach in 1940, Laurel and Hardy moved to Twentieth Century-Fox, where they shot a series of profitable though largely unfunny features. Gone was the creative freedom they had enjoyed at Roach, replaced with an assembly line mentality that was anathema to a creative artist who aspired to some control over his work. Despite the uneven quality of their ’40s films, Laurel and Hardy boosted wartime morale by being a familiar, comforting presence, guest starring on radio and entertaining enlisted people at USO shows. Their final film, Atoll K (1950), was a critical and popular disaster, and the comics were faced with the reality that their film careers were coming to an end.
TV offered some hope, and a new generation would discover Laurel and Hardy via broadcasts of their shorts, though for the immediate future it would take a personal touch to keep them in fans’ hearts. They had toured the British Isles in 1932 to tremendous fanfare, and now new tours of the UK were in the works. It mattered little that the comics’ stage material was less than stellar; Stan and Ollie were there, in the flesh, and that was enough.
Laurel and Hardy’s art transcends that of Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges (and other successful comedy teams), because they were masterful comic actors who were untouchable in their ability to convey emotion. And, unlike Abbott and Costello and the Stooges, whose material tended to be vaudeville-inspired “schtick,” Laurel and Hardy seemed like real people, whose joys and tribulations were palpable. They were us—provided that we were willing to see ourselves as sometimes awkward and befuddled, sometimes heroic and chivalrous.
